Angle-of-Arrival Estimation Based on Horizontally Placed Photodiodes with Different Lenses

Angle of arrival (AOA) estimation with tilted photodiodes (PDs) is fast, accurate and low-cost for visible light positioning (VLP) systems. However, the most popular component assembly technology, surface-mount technology (SMT), is not able to orient the PDs towards their desired tilting angles, making it challenging to manufacture the AOA estimators massively and efficiently. In this work, we propose a novel AOA estimator based on an array of horizontally placed PDs with different lenses, where the incident light angles can be estimated by the ratios of the received optical signal intensities. Such an AOA estimator can be manufactured with the SMT lines in factories and we derive closed-form expressions for the involved AOA estimation algorithm. The proposed scheme provides an SMTcompatible solution for PD-based AOA estimation, and lays theoretical foundations for the error analysis.